Utah Brewery Map

Friday, April 08, 2011

Sharia Law in Utah

So yesterday one DABC Douch-Bag announced that he wants beer gone from gas/convenience Stores. While all this is going this is going on some State Legislators are suddenly backtracking on their positions that mandate the DABC close liquor stores due to the Legislatures imposed $2.2 million budget cut.

Senate President Michael Waddoups says he does not want to see any state liquor stores close or their employees laid off. He says the DABC needs to come up with a new business plan to minimize costs without cutting jobs and closing doors.

Now you'll notice none of this was said during the legislative session. It's only now after droves of pissed-off constituents have threatened their cushy elected jobs, they finally listen.

Lawmakers dolled out $100,000 to hire a consultant to come up with an alternate business plan for the DABC.

"They've got time to get this business plan done, to hire their consultant, to find out the what the best way to do. They don't have to close stores on April the 28th, they shouldn't close stores on April the 28th. I think they failed their duty in this instance," said Waddoups.

Waddoups proposes that if the DABC has no other solution but to close stores and force layoffs that they should consider raising the liquor prices by 1%.

Here's an idea. Bring GOOD craft beer from out of state. We spend more money at Utah State Liquor stores, instead of driving to WY/ID/NV/CA to buy it, and they have higher revenue. Seems like a win/win to me!I just saved the state $100k, maybe they'll give me a cut :)

There really is no other way to cut their budget by that amount without reducing the operating hours of all stores in the state. And even then it would be iffy. They actually do run a rather tight ship since the majority of their profits goes to the state for other programs.

They still haven't realized that by closing stores that make money, they will ultimately hurt the state budget because less money will come in for other programs. They were running under the assumption that everyone would just drive the extra distance to a store that is open. I'll bet a lot of people in St. Greorge start driving to Nevada.

So, between this and the $30K our legislators paid themselves for the special session to repeal HB477, Utah taxpayers are out at least $130K due to poor planning and research by our esteemed legislators.

Also to be noted is that, in the case of decreased revenue from alcohol sales due to closed outlets, the probability that these same legislators say, "Oops, we made a mistake, maybe we should re-open one of those locations (that we are still paying the bond on anyway)", is probably as close to zero as you can get without actually going into the negative. More likely is that they would see the decreased revenue as a 'sign' that they should close even more locations.

The same "cut across the board" madness is part of the national budgeting also. $330 billion is out there in uncollected taxes. This is 9 times the savings in the current budget. For every dollar spent on IRS agents 10 dollars are collected in revenue. So, what should we do? Cut the funding for hiring IRS agents of course!